“You don’t have to say anything in particular or do anything in particular to be helpful to people. You become a bodhisattva by wishing for your own happiness as well as the happiness of others, and by opening to your own experience in a loving way. When you love yourself and are kind enough to yourself to be who you really are, you’re showing others what they need to do in order to be free.”

“Life and death occur in a moment. In other words, life and death are nothing but moment. You don’t believe that your life is a moment, because in everyday life you always have lots of choices. But if you see death, you taste it immediately. Moment and you come together, creating the momentum energy of time, and you and death become one; you have no choice.”

Zen Master Xuefeng taught the assembly, "All the Buddhas of the three times turn the Wheel of Reality in the midst of fire."
Yunmen said, "The flames present the Teachings of the Buddhas of the three times. All the Buddhas do is stand there and listen!"

“This doesn’t work by thought and will. It doesn’t disregard thought and will, but thought and will are not the engine that makes this go. The engine that makes this go is taking a step back and trusting the body, trusting the breath, trusting the heart. We’re living our lives madly trying to hold onto everything, and it looks like it might work for awhile but in the end it always fails, and it never was working, and the way to be happy, the way to be loving, the way to be free is to really be willing to let go of everything on every occasion or at least to make that effort.

So the practice really works with sitting down, returning awareness to the body, returning awareness to the breath. It usually involves sitting up straight and opening up the body and lifting the body so that the breath can be unrestrained. And then returning the mind to the present moment of being alive, which is anchored in the breath, in the body.

Then, of course, other things happen. You have thoughts, you have feelings. You might have a pain, an ache, visions, memories, reflections. All these things arise, but instead of applying yourself to them and getting entangled in them, you just bear witness to it, let it go, come back to the breathing and the body, and what happens is you release a whole lot of stuff in yourself. A whole new process comes into being that would not have been there if you were always fixing and choosing and doing and making. This way you’re allowing something to take place within your heart.”

"When Yaoshan was sitting, a monk asked him: “What do you think when you sit?” The Master said, “I think of not thinking.” The monk queried further, “How do you think of not thinking?” Yaoshan replied, “[By sitting] beyond thinking.”

When we are sitting, we do not follow our thoughts, nor do we stop them. We just let them come and go freely. We cannot call it thinking, because the thoughts are not grasped. If we simply follow our thinking, it is exactly that, and not zazen. We cannot call it not thinking, either, because thoughts are coming and going, like clouds floating in the sky. When we are sitting, our brains don’t stop working, just as our stomachs don’t stop digesting. Sometimes our minds are busy; sometimes they are calm. Just sitting without being concerned with the condition of our minds is the most important point of zazen."

Kosho Uchiyama,“Opening the Hand of Thought.”

"People often get too quick to say 'there's no self. There's no self...no self...no self.' There is self, there is focal point, its not yours. That's what not self is."

Ninoslav Ñāṇamoli
Senses and the Thought-1, 42:53

"Those who create constructs about the Buddha,
Who is beyond construction and without exhaustion,
Are thereby damaged by their constructs;
They fail to see the Thus-Gone.

That which is the nature of the Thus-Gone
Is also the nature of this world.
There is no nature of the Thus-Gone.
There is no nature of the world."

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

CedarTree wrote:“You don’t have to say anything in particular or do anything in particular to be helpful to people. You become a bodhisattva by wishing for your own happiness as well as the happiness of others, and by opening to your own experience in a loving way. When you love yourself and are kind enough to yourself to be who you really are, you’re showing others what they need to do in order to be free.”

aflatun wrote:"When Yaoshan was sitting, a monk asked him: “What do you think when you sit?” The Master said, “I think of not thinking.” The monk queried further, “How do you think of not thinking?” Yaoshan replied, “[By sitting] beyond thinking.”

When we are sitting, we do not follow our thoughts, nor do we stop them. We just let them come and go freely. We cannot call it thinking, because the thoughts are not grasped. If we simply follow our thinking, it is exactly that, and not zazen. We cannot call it not thinking, either, because thoughts are coming and going, like clouds floating in the sky. When we are sitting, our brains don’t stop working, just as our stomachs don’t stop digesting. Sometimes our minds are busy; sometimes they are calm. Just sitting without being concerned with the condition of our minds is the most important point of zazen."

I like this kirtu! I am trying to remember the story of one monk (I think Zen) who desperately needed water and in the middle of the night found himself in a cave and found what he thought was pure water and drank. It tasted absolutely amazing. The next morning he saw that it was filled with debris and maggots and other horrible things and vomited up all the water. At that moment he was enlightened.

CedarTree wrote:“You don’t have to say anything in particular or do anything in particular to be helpful to people. You become a bodhisattva by wishing for your own happiness as well as the happiness of others, and by opening to your own experience in a loving way. When you love yourself and are kind enough to yourself to be who you really are, you’re showing others what they need to do in order to be free.”

beautiful

I know, I like that one too, now it's your turn to add a Soto Zen quote!

"Green waters and verdant mountains
are the places to walk in meditation;
by the streams or under the trees
are places to clear the mind.
Observe impermanence,
never forget it;
this urges on the will to seek enlightenment."

“After some time, though—and this takes years to really develop—you begin to get a perspective on things. You begin to realize that there’s nothing more important than just letting go. Don’t take what I’ve said to mean that problems won’t come up anymore; they will. But you begin to see things for what they are: ideas, plans, and even how you perceive the things around you are just mental secretions.”

Kosho Uchiyama, “Opening the Hand of Thought.”

"People often get too quick to say 'there's no self. There's no self...no self...no self.' There is self, there is focal point, its not yours. That's what not self is."

Ninoslav Ñāṇamoli
Senses and the Thought-1, 42:53

"Those who create constructs about the Buddha,
Who is beyond construction and without exhaustion,
Are thereby damaged by their constructs;
They fail to see the Thus-Gone.

That which is the nature of the Thus-Gone
Is also the nature of this world.
There is no nature of the Thus-Gone.
There is no nature of the world."